Monday, October 28, 2013

MASSIMO LANCELLOTTI HOUSE

Beginning of the seventeenth century. The architect is unknown: maybe it was Francesco Borromini (1599/1667) who was then in the service of the Giustiniani, or, more likely, Carlo Lambardi (1545/1619)

In 1802 Prince Giustiniani was forced to sell to the Marquis Carlo Massimo who rebuilt the house

Originally it spread over an area six times larger than at present

Since 1947 is the headquarter of the Delegation of the Franciscans in the Holy Land

The wings around the garden were only built in 1951

In the GARDEN funerary altars and great ancient statue known as "Justinian" with modern head

MAIN HALL

Fresco on the ceiling "Allegorical figurations" early 1800 by Domenico Del Frate (1765/1821), who also made the ceiling of the Gallery of Tapestries in the Vatican Museums with the chiaroscuro technique that gives the illusion of ancient bas-reliefs

They diverged from the classic-academic model, and strove for a new art, especially based on patriotism and religion, a language that gave archaic characteristics, using a strong pronunciation of the tract and a raw coloring made of uniform, solid strokes

They took the name Nazarenes for their long and elegant hair and their monastic attitudes

In these three rooms they performed their last collective work as well as their Roman masterpiece:

Other three walls "Rinaldo in the enchanted garden", "Rinaldo and Armida", the lovely "Death of Odoardo and Gildippe" and the great "Conquest of the Holy Sepulchre" 1827/29 by the Polish Joseph von Fürich (1800/86)

Fürich replaced Overbeck who, after the death of the Marquis Carlo Massimo, considered himself free of the contract and went to paint religious subjects in the Portiuncula in Assisi

DANTE'S ROOM (on the left)

Initially entrusted to Peter Cornelius, who, however, made only a draft and went into the service of Prince Ludwig Bavaria

"Scenes of Hell and Purgatory"1825/28 by the Austrian Joseph Anton Koch (1768/1839) who made the most of Dante's dramatic effects even in a room of such a small size. Some nude figures painted were censored at the behest of Princess Massimo

Ceiling "Allegory of Paradise": "Empyrean" in the center and four sections with the eight heavens visited by Dante 1818/24 by Philipp Veit (1793/1877)

"The Nazarenes were so called because of the great religious sensitivity and the fashion of long blond hair. They argued that art should represent religious themes, which would indeed be a means of religious propaganda, and they referred to the painters of the Italian Quattrocento up to Raphael, devaluing the neoclassical canons of beauty keeping away both from abstraction and formalism of ideal beauty and from imitation of vulgar nature. Their proposal was also existential: their association involved a model of community life, performing collective work and referring to the condition of the ancient craftsmen. Their example will be followed also by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, born in 1848 in England" (Carlo Bertelli, Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)